


One Universe Over

by hrhrionastar



Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Alternate Universe, Episode: s01e22 Reckoning, F/F, F/M, Gen, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-16
Updated: 2012-09-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 09:53:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/513974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hrhrionastar/pseuds/hrhrionastar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Reckoning</i> AU. One universe over, Richard and Cara don't find Shota in the dungeons of the People's Palace. One universe over, they never hear stories of 'Master Rahl.' Instead, they meet…a Nicholas who confessed everyone in his father's dungeons; the daughter Kahlan always swore she wanted; and others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Universe Over

**Author's Note:**

> _Reckoning_ introduces so many different possibilities, and I've always wondered what would happen if things didn't work out exactly the way they do. What if Nicholas wasn't evil? What if Darken and Kahlan had a daughter? And so on. I couldn't manage to write one where Alice did whatever it took to stay alive and tell Richard what he needed to know, but here are some AUs the show couldn't explore.

Richard and Cara meet...

1\. _a Nicholas who confessed everyone in his father's dungeons in_ :  
  


**The Scholar**

  
Gray nothingness coalesced into a grassy hill. Richard hit hard, the Boxes of Orden skittering out of his hands as he landed on his knees.  
  
He looked up.  
  
Blue eyes swirled black in the twilight gloom. A hand closed around Richard's throat.  
  
The sound of three arrows thudding into the Mord'Sith's chest was drowned, for Richard, by thunder echoing on the inside of his skull.  
  
Then it was over. Love washed through his soul, leaving no corner of his mind unflooded and spilling out of him in words:  
  
"Command me, Confessor."  
  
The Mord'Sith was not dead yet. She staggered to her feet, her agiel pointing at Richard's master.  
  
Richard tripped her. She fell to her knees beside him, green eyes strangely reproachful—or maybe just furious.  
  
The Confessor reached out again.  
  


* * *

  
Later, when Nicholas Rahl had put together the Boxes of Orden and returned to his dark sanctuary in an abandoned castle once owned by one of his father's most loyal generals, he explained to the confessed Seeker,  
  
"I knew about you from Father's journals. After I killed him, I went through everything. Including the dungeons, which is how I knew you would return."  
  
He paused. Thinking he wanted an answer, Richard said eagerly, "yes, master."  
  
"When I had confessed the witchwoman, she told me your story. Then all I had to do was wait. And now I am the master of Orden."  
  
Nicholas spoke words of triumph, but his voice was weary and his eyelids drooped lazily over eyes that had no more need to turn black.  
  
He had slain the last of the Mord'Sith and made the Seeker a slave.  
  
There was no one left to oppose him.  
  
"Master?" asked Richard.  
  
Nicholas Rahl was alone.  
  
  
  
2\. _the daughter Kahlan always swore she wanted in_ :  
  


**The Slave of Duty**

  
Gray nothingness coalesced into a grassy hill. Richard hit hard, the Boxes of Orden skittering out of his hands as he landed on his knees.  
  
He looked up.  
  
Blue eyes met his. They shone out of a calm face that somehow just missed being beautiful.  
  
"Seeker," said the woman. She turned to the Mord'Sith and nodded to her, too. "Mistress."  
  
The Mord'Sith eased slowly out of her fighting crouch. She scanned the surrounding trees, as if expecting soldiers to come pouring out any second. Finally, and obviously with a good deal of reluctance, she inclined her head at the woman.  
  
"My lady," said the Mord'Sith.  
  
"Yes," agreed the woman who had greeted them. She brushed a lock of dark hair back from her brow and knelt carefully on the grass. "Please, sit."  
  
When Richard and the Mord'Sith had sat, completing a small circle with the dark woman, she folded her hands in her lap and began to speak.  
  
"My name is Serena Rahl," she said. "And you are both displaced in time. It is my duty to send you home."  
  
"Displaced in time?" asked Richard.  
  
"Where is Lord Rahl?" demanded the Mord'Sith in the same moment.  
  
"If you mean Darken Rahl, my father, he is dead," replied Serena, a shadow passing over her even features. "He forced my mother to marry him after the Seeker disappeared, and then he was murdered by his sister Jennsen when I was a baby. She was executed, much to Mother's sorrow as she told me later, and General Egremont was regent for me until I came of age."  
  
Serena paused to smooth her skirts over her knees. Then she looked up, directly at Richard.  
  
"Mother told me about you from my earliest days, Richard," she said. "I promised her on her deathbed that I would confess the Seeker."  
  
"Confess? Then—you are Kahlan's daughter?" Richard could scarcely believe it. Yet nothing else made sense, in light of Serena's strange tale.  
  
"The Mother Confessor told you to confess the Seeker?" The Mord'Sith's sharp voice broke in upon Richard and Serena. Her disbelief was palpable and bitter.  
  
"Yes," said Serena. She was unruffled, and Richard couldn't decide if her placidity was part of her nature or whether it came from some deeper emotion hidden beneath that calm surface. "While he puts together the Boxes of Orden and you strike him with your agiel. You are the only one who can do this. The other Mord'Sith are gone."  
  
"Gone?" For the first time, the Mord'Sith sounded lost.  
  
"Mother did not allow them to take more girls after my father died," Serena explained. "Thank the Creator."  
  
She shivered, apparently at the thought of children warped to serve another's purpose, without lives of their own.  
  
"I see." The Mord'Sith was back to hard inscrutability. She said nothing more.  
  
"Come," said Serena. "I will send you home."  
  


* * *

  
Richard knelt on the ground with his hands gripping the Boxes of Orden, an agiel sending waves of pain down his neck, and a Confessor's fingers around his throat.  
  
Kahlan's, not Serena's.  
  
The shock of temporal displacement held him immobile for a moment.  
  
Then, with difficulty, he craned his head around to look at the Mord'Sith.  
  
Cara glared into the Seeker's eyes. Then she took the agiel from his neck and pressed it instead to the base of his skull.  
  
An agiel to the heart was a quick death. An agiel to the brain was even quicker.  
  
The Seeker slumped to the ground, numb fingers slipping from the Boxes of Orden, as Darken Rahl appeared in the clearing as a gigantic bird and shed his feathers.  
  
The Wizard turned his fire upon one of Cara's sisters. She stood back as he burned, gaze already drawn to the Confessor.  
  
Cara longed to kill Kahlan Amnell now, but Lord Rahl would doubtless demand the pleasure for himself after she told him what she'd seen of the future.  
  
Either way, Cara had fulfilled her orders. "Tonight," Lord Rahl had said, "we kill the Seeker."  
  
And Cara was going to make sure not one of his other enemies got close to her lord—not his sister, and not the Confessor.  
  
She had taken the lessons of the future to heart.  
  
  
  
3\. _the daughter Kahlan never knew in_ :  
  


**The Listener's Queen**

  
Gray nothingness coalesced into a grassy hill. Richard hit hard, the Boxes of Orden skittering out of his hands as he landed on his knees.  
  
He looked up.  
  
A leather-clad fist made a brief, red blur in his vision before connecting with his face.  
  


* * *

  
It took Cara several days to reach the People's Palace. She commandeered a horse in the nearest village and rode with the Boxes of Orden hanging from the saddle and the Seeker bound behind her.  
  
He did not give her his word that he wouldn't try to escape, but then, she didn't ask for it. It seemed too much to expect.  
  
All she knew was that she had to find Lord Rahl. And the Seeker was coming with her.  
  
The throne room of the People's Palace was full of petitioners. Unusually, there were two thrones. The second was the one traditionally for the heir, which made Cara's heart beat faster as soon as she recognized it.  
  
But it was empty.  
  
Lord Rahl's throne was filled by a strikingly beautiful dark woman who was older than she looked at first glance. At her side stood a man with long red hair threaded with silver and a jagged scar from left cheekbone to jaw. A sword hung at his waist.  
  
"Where is Lord Rahl?" Cara demanded.  
  
The crowds of petitioners melted away before her, whispering behind their hands as they took in the Seeker, his wrists bound, at her side.  
  
"I am _Lady_ Rahl," said the woman, sitting up straighter in the throne. "If you mean Darken Rahl, my father, he has been dead for the past twenty years."  
  
Cara felt her stomach drop in sudden dread or grief or both.  
  
The red-haired man looked at her intently.  
  
"The Mother Confessor," asked the Seeker. "Where is she?"  
  
"My mother, Queen Kahlan," nodded the self-proclaimed Lady Rahl. "She died giving birth to me."  
  
"Queen?" The Seeker's voice was anguished.  
  
"Yes," said my lady, frowning. " _Who_ are you?" She asked it as though she had forgotten and merely needed to be reminded.  
  
"Richard," whispered the red-haired man. "It's _Richard_ , Elena—the Seeker!"  
  
"Renn?" gasped the Seeker.  
  
"Who, the _Seek_ er?" said Elena Rahl. "How shocking."  
  
"What?" asked Cara.  
  
Then she rolled her eyes at herself for being so idiotic as to join in the general confusion.  
  
Elena Rahl rose, her red skirts flaring elegantly around her, and she led Cara to a private room while Renn took the Seeker somewhere. Cara watched Elena accost a young Mord'Sith with a hand on her arm, but couldn't hear the low-voiced command.  
  
Soon, though, the young mistress brought food and took away the bag containing the Boxes of Orden in order to lay it at her lady's feet, and Cara hardly noticed because she was half-famished and Elena was listening so encouragingly to her story.  
  
"You are Mistress Cara," said Elena. "My father spoke of you often. I know that he never ceased to mourn you."  
  
She put a hand on Cara's knee.  
  
Pride warred with sorrow in Cara's heart. Emotions like sadness and love made a person weak, she knew, and so she told herself savagely that pride won.  
  
Elena's white fingers certainly did not blur before her eyes.  
  
"Thank you," Cara said, and swallowed. "Lady Rahl."  
  
  
  
4\. _the woman who held D'Hara and the Midlands together during the bloodiest war since the days of the first male Confessors in_ :  
  


**The Mord'Sith Regent**

  
Gray nothingness coalesced into a grassy hill. Richard hit hard, the Boxes of Orden skittering out of his hands as he landed on his knees.  
  
He looked up.  
  
A tall woman in Mord'Sith leathers who had to be as old as Zedd stood before him. He could see her delicately featured face in profile. A long white braid hung down her back.  
  
She wasn't looking at him.  
  
"Cara," she said softly, "she told me you would come."  
  


* * *

  
The old woman's name was Dahlia. She and her escort, a mixed group of Mord'Sith and soldiers—every one of them either very young or obviously severely battle-scarred—took Richard and the Mord'Sith who'd arrived with him to a nearby village.  
  
Dahlia did not speak until she was alone with Richard and Cara in the private room at the inn.  
  
Then she told them a story.  
  
"You disappeared fifty-eight years ago," she said. "Both of you. It was assumed that you were dead. Lord Rahl wed the Mother Confessor. The conflict with the Midlands was ended."  
  
Richard wanted to interrupt, possibly to utter some horrified protest at the thought of Kahlan, defenseless and at Darken Rahl's mercy, but something in the unspoken tension between Cara and Dahlia made him refrain.  
  
"Lady Rahl gave him two sons, Nicholas and Jacob," Dahlia went on. "They were opposite in every way. Lady Rahl told me before she died that she had always known it was folly to hope that a male Confessor would not be a monster, but that even if the Creator had seen fit to grant her that mercy, She would not do so twice. And so it proved. Nicholas and Jacob fought one another in a war that consumed a D'Haran generation. They are all dead now—Darken Rahl, your Kahlan," to Richard, "their sons." And to Cara, "your son."  
  
"My son?" Cara asked. Richard, looking at her, saw that her eyes had gone all soft with unshed tears.  
  
His own heart was heavy enough that he understood her sorrow.  
  
"Sam," Dahlia nodded. "And his son is dead—Declan, that would be, who married a Sister of the Light—and little Carabeth is all that remains of the House of Rahl. She's Sam's granddaughter, an orphan, just six years old and the hope of D'Hara." She looked at Cara. "She has your eyes."  
  
"I want to see her," said Cara.  
  
"I will take you to her," Dahlia promised.  
  
"Kahlan can't be dead!" Richard begged of an unfeeling universe. "There _has_ to be a way to get her back!"  
  
"There is," said Dahlia. "That is, there is a way for you to return to her. She told me you would need Orden and Confession and agiel. I can swear that no Mord'Sith under my command will lend you her agiel to tear apart time, and I can't let you keep the Boxes of Orden. As for a Confessor—you have my leave to search. Perhaps Nicholas or Jacob has a child somewhere, in hiding. If you find such a one, bring her to me."  
  
Orden, Confession, agiel. Richard heard and remembered. And he vowed that if he could find a way home to Kahlan, then Dahlia would not stop him.  
  
No one would.  
  
  
  
5\. _a world where combining Orden, Confession, and agiel sends them 58 more years into the future in_ :  
  


**The Fast-Forward Machine**

  
Gray nothingness coalesced into a grassy hill. Richard hit hard, the Boxes of Orden skittering out of his hands as he landed on his knees.  
  
He looked up.  
  
There was a building in the clearing.  
  
As Richard stared in indignation, several people in black ran out of the structure. They waved their arms and shouted at Richard and Cara.  
  
When they got closer, they drew swords.  
  
Cara and Richard fought together, their moves like a deadly dance. Their attackers didn't stand a chance.  
  
Only when Richard and Cara stood ringed by a circle of black clad bodies and no more appeared forthcoming did they pause and look around.  
  
Richard was holding the sword of one of the enemies he'd slain. Blood dripped down its silvery length from a cut on his arm. A few strands of hair had escaped Cara's braid. Otherwise they were unharmed.  
  
"I thought your witchwoman said we'd be back in the past," complained Cara. "I don't see Lord Rahl or the Mother Confessor."  
  
"I don't understand," said Richard. "Unless—but we can't be."  
  
"What?"  
  
"Further in the future," Richard said, his heart sinking.  
  
There was no building in the clearing where he'd put together the Boxes of Orden while Kahlan confessed him. There never had been a building there.  
  
But maybe someday there would be.  
  
"Another fifty-years?" Cara guessed.  
  
Richard nodded. It seemed like a safe assumption.  
  
"We need a Confessor," he said.  
  
Cara did not ask how they'd find one, or what they'd do if Nicholas Rahl was dead and had left no children, for which Richard was grateful.  
  
A worse question occupied his mind.  
  
What if Orden and Confession and agiel only sent someone _forward_ in time?  
  
What if he and Cara could never return at all?


End file.
